Hmmmm!
Originally posted by Tortoise-Licker
It just goes to show how different the two Nations views are on paintballing. Over here the majority of the people who play in the woods are corperate days out or stag do's. The site owners offer no encouragement for players to own their own markers and walk ons are near enough none existant.
That's the thing, paintball in England is no where near the level it has reached in the states - the first time I played in America, almost a year ago now, the only rental player out of a about 30-40 players that randomly turned up was my neighbour and about 4 others! There were people with your standard Tipmanns as you would expect - but I saw this guy with a tricked out Black Magic, totally into rec. ball too!
About the site owners offering no ecouragement to walk on in England - I couldn't agree more with you! The attitude towards walk ons is horrendous over here (the majority of the time). There has only ever been about 2 people with their own equipment at the site where I marshall in the past 10 months! It's because you just don't make the money that way! Even if the odd person brings their own kit, they most certainly gotta go with FPO - and even then ure getting charged about £100 a box over here (that's about $150).
I'm sure part of it is the market in England, maybe part of it is also the 'tight brit' mentality also, I'm not sure. But the point is - the rec ball scene is miniscule over here in comparison to the states in terms of regular players.
Tying in with PGI - to get a hold of a copy in England, you have to either have a subscription or order it specially from you're newsagents/bookstore. I've never seen a copy on the shelf. I go to the states however, and they have 6 copies in the periodical section of most bookstores and even the occasional newsagent I go to. The contrast is huge - then you go to The Sports Authority in the states where you'll find people like Greg getting their first Spyder/Tippmann to begin with - proceeding up to cockers, they'll see PGI on the shelf and flick through it cos it is 'paintball'. When the however many thousands of yanks flick through it and see Joe Schmoe they'll think " cool, that's just like what I did last weekend' or 'Oh yeah, I can totally relate to a story like that" or "Awesome, they cover rec ballers in here too".
There are so many of them over there, you can't just cut them off - it would be like throwing a huge potential number of readers out of the window, now why would PGI want to do that?
Turn the page or rip it out and nail it to the back of your chrono booth if it reaaaaally gets under you're skin that much TL
(That's what we did at my site with the full length 'Mission
aintball' bloke, he he he he
)
